O afeto além dos muros e portões : o apego a vizinhanças na cidade do Natal

Place Attachment is a positive affective bond between people and environments, and its main characteristic is the desire to maintain closeness to the place of attachment. Neighborhoods, in turn, are spaces close to the dwelling, which varies according to environmental, social and cultural characteristics. Facing the contemporary scenario of diminishment of neighborhood relations and its importance to the understanding of cities social-environmental context, the present work aimed to investigate the attachment to neighborhoods at the city of Natal-RN. This study had two stages. The first stage consisted on investigating, through an experts panel, the main characteristics of attached neighborhoods, aspects that contributes to the development of these neighborhoods, the ones that difficult, as well as look for indications of neighborhoods at the city of Natal that may be identified by these elements. In the following stage I interviewed 11 residents of two indicated neighborhoods at the district of Alecrim, to better comprehend the main characteristics of this attachment and the elements of the context that enable its development. The content of the interviews, categorized and evaluated by judges, indicated that, due to the 10 participant experts, the main characteristics of attached neighborhoods encompass elements of socialization, cooperation, physical space usage, intimacy and identity. According to them, these are characteristics enabled by temporal and rootedness aspects, by spatial contact, familiarity between neighbors, and cultural inheritance. The interviews with residents showed that attachment to the studied neighborhoods is specially grounded on support and cooperation networks between neighbors, on satisfaction with the proximity of services, and on the bond to symbolic aspects and local traditions. In addition to be enabled by spatial organization, by low displacement of residents, and by the district s history, relations at these neighborhoods are fostered by an intention to establish this kind of ties, carried by cultural values